They love a bit of theatre: viciously sharp knives are stabbed into tables with a thud; meat is butchered loudly to order
We should be eating less meat, not just for our personal health, but for that of the planet. Forgive the contrariness of kicking off a steak restaurant review with a glum piety, but please, bear with me. I’m not alone in refusing to renounce meat for ever, but those of us who are committed to the carnivorous life do need to do it differently. We should regard meat the way we do chocolate or booze or threesomes: not intrinsically wrong, but best not done to excess.
Have meat little and seldom and, when you do, make sure it’s the best you can lay your paws on. In the canon of fine beef, Piedmont’s fassone cattle are right up there. I’ve written about this remarkable meat before, when an earlier incarnation of this Genovese butcher (“macellaio”) opened in west London, about its extraordinary qualities, notably the ancient breed’s muscular hypertrophy: the “double muscling” rogue gene that makes it extraordinarily low in fat and cholesterol. That it also delivers a blast of purest beefy flavour is a glorious bonus. This time, the Macellaio boys are dedicating equal billing to tuna, the “steak of the sea”.
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